Our View: Brown Warren race is driving us to distraction

So this is how the highest-profile, most expensive and maybe most strategically important Senate campaign in the country is going to go?

So this is how the highest-profile, most expensive and maybe most strategically important Senate campaign in the country is going to go?

So much for the issues.

It's the "birther" argument, reframed. Four years ago, the question was where the presidential candidate was born. Today, it's a debate over the Senate candidate's DNA.

Sen. Scott Brown's campaign for re-election over challenger Elizabeth Warren so far has touched on only the fringes of the issues such as the economy, the environment, the military or the budget, focusing instead on an unbelievably distracting discussion of Warren's Native American heritage, or lack thereof.

CNN blogger Moni Basu writes: "The New England Historic Genealogical Society provided initial research that shows several members of Warren's maternal family claiming Cherokee heritage. Warren's great-great-great grandmother O.C. Sarah Smith, is said to be described as Cherokee in an 1894 marriage license application. The genealogical society gathered that information through a 2006 family newsletter and said the original application cannot be located."

The ambiguity of the license's existence should be sufficient — to allow Brown supporters to continue to press the case, and for Warren supporters to say the case is settled.

Brown's staff members caught on video delivering war hoops and tomahawk chops offers a view inside his campaign. The fervor we see from not only staff but also rally participants reminds us what unpleasant business politics is.

Warren said she was appalled at the contents of the video. Of course she was. It is appalling.

People don't usually act this way, but if you put them in a crowd, spout some half-truths and get them all rolling in the same direction with some "clever" device or catch phrase, you get yourself an exciting, memorable rally.

The latest from the Brown campaign on substantive issues? Sorry, nothing there, but we can thank them for telling us that Warren has done legal work for big corporations to the detriment of "the little guy."

Brown's letter to Warren on Wednesday says: "During this campaign, you have accused others of siding with big corporations. As it turns out, you are the only candidate in this race who has stood on the side of large corporate interests over the middle class."

That is an unfair statement on at least two counts. First, Warren, on WTTK on Tuesday, set the record straight on what work she did, why she did it and whether it had any impact on the final dispositions of the cases.

Second, Brown hasn't yet responded to Warren's charge during the first debate — made several times — that the 2 and 3 percent at the top of the wealth pyramid can always count on his support, even when those below can't.

Is Warren lying, and perpetuating a lie? We may never find out whether she is part Cherokee and Delaware, as her family told her since childhood.

Her answer to charges she used her ancestry for advantage are reasonable. Those who hired her didn't learn of the claim until after her hiring.

Brown's accusation, based on appearance only — "Clearly she's not" — is unreasonable, and as a lawyer, he knows that. If his campaign's approach is to focus on thinly supported attacks on Warren's character, what does he imply about his own?